The present invention is directed generally to computer systems, and more particularly to error messages in computer operating systems and applications.
When a software product such as an application or operating system detects an error, the product often outputs an error message to the user to help the user understand what error occurred and why the error occurred, so that the error can be avoided or overcome. For a number of reasons, some of these error messages are very general and limited in what they tell the user. These general error messages are thus usually of little help to the user or product support personnel called by the user, because they do not provide enough information to help resolve the problem, or avoid it in the future.
One reason that general error messages are used is that when a product is released to the market, some software bugs and other error-causing situations are not well understood, or are undiscovered at that time. It is not an efficient use of development resources to attempt to have a product precisely identify every error condition. Moreover, it may be extremely difficult for code to detect some error conditions, such as knowing whether another particular product or device is installed. The proper error conditions may not even exist when a product is released, as new problems may arise when the product is used on a new version of the operating system, or is used in conjunction with other new products or devices. Indeed, some errors are not the fault of the software product, but rather an error in some related software such as a device driver that can only be fixed by replacing the device driver.
After a product is released, the large base of users finds bugs and other problems that cannot be reasonably encountered or isolated by a software test team, particularly because many problems result from the wide variety of software and hardware configurations in actual use. Over the product cycle, the support team is often able to isolate the specific cause of many of these the problem based on user feedback, whereby a successful workaround or fix may be found. The now-recognized error information is often distributed in xe2x80x9cFAQ""sxe2x80x9d (web sites or the like displaying answers to frequently asked questions) or message boards. However, only a small percentage of users who encounter the error may actually find the information.
As a result, even after a problem is recognized and a solution developed, many users still need to call product support to find out about the solution. However, such calls are expensive to handle. If the user is charged the expense, many users are very unsatisfied, particularly when the user did nothing wrong. In any event, both the user and the product manufacturer typically wish that the product could have handled the problem without having to call product support, or at least have been more helpful initially.
Briefly, the present invention provides a system and method for dynamically updating the error messages of a shipped software product. The existing, typically generic error messages shipped with a software product are replaced or appended as errors are resolved or better understood, whereby a user who receives an error message will see the latest known information for that error message.
When an indication of an error having an existing error message associated therewith is received at a centralized error handling mechanism, the mechanism attempts to locate data in a dynamic error message file data that corresponds to an updated error message for that error. If message information corresponding to the error is found, the found message information is used to provide an error message. If not found, the existing error message of the software product is provided.
The found message information may indicate whether to replace the existing error message with the updated error message or to append the updated error message to the existing error message. Blank fields may be provided in the updated error message, and conditions may be included with the updated error message data to determine whether the updated error message should apply. An updated error message can be changed or reset to the original message if a problem changes or goes away, and updated messages may include certain identifying information for the purpose of assisting product support personnel in resolving user problems.
Other advantages will become apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the drawings, in which: